Seldom has a great master come into the world with such an outwardly commanding and heroic role as Jesus. The age Jesus lived in was a hard one. He had to survive a public mission in a rough, dogmatic, and intolerant society. Never did he hesitate to “thunder” when the occasion called for a divine rumble.

Learning to direct the energy of the heart is probably our most important challenge spiritually. If we want to awaken to our true state of unity with the Divine, we must learn to control our feelings and to channel them in a positive direction.

Remember, when your love for God becomes a constant, silent yearning of your heart, all other things will melt away like morning mist before the rising sun. The greatest way to cling to God is to cling first to love.

I’ve always been certain I could do anything well I set my mind to — not because I considered myself particularly adept, but because, instead of holding the thought hopelessly, “I can’t do that!” I’ve told myself, “Even though I don’t see how I can do that, I know God can do anything, even through the poorest instrument!”

Always be wise in your seeking. The emotional excitement of finding new ways must always be balanced against the truth that “loyalty is the first law of God.” Eclecticism indicates a lack of serious purpose.

The ultimate culprit that holds us back spiritually is the non-use of Paramhansa Yogananda’s techniques. The failure to use the spiritual tools given by the Guru puts us out of attunement with him.

For all its persuasiveness, life is as unreal as any movie. There is no substance at all to the manifested universe—except inasmuch as movies are real: as appearances, merely. The vast drama of time, space, and active life is a colossal fiction!

The moral of this story: No matter how prosperous or powerful you are, unless you learn the art of right behavior and right living, you will drown in the seas of difficulty.

Worry-consciousness not only creates problems where none really exist, but actually interferes with one’s efforts to resolve problems where they do exist.

At last the cloud of silence within me, holding Thee remote, burst, and the rising waters of Thy Spirit broke the narrow boundaries of my soul, baptizing me in Thine expanding waters of infinity.

Divine courage comes from living in the awareness of God’s presence within, and the realization that He is the sole Reality.

The Infinite is inconceivable, but the finite gives us a starting point. Can the intelligence reflected in Nature come out of nothing? Is it not reasonable to suppose that somewhere there is some sort of “factory” that produces intelligence?

The more energy and will power you put into changing a particular karma, the sooner that karma will dissipate and the sooner the good karma you’re now creating will start to bear fruit.

The only free will we have is to turn toward God or to reject Him— to love Him or to spurn Him. Otherwise, since God is omniscient, everything that we do — and will do– is already known, even what color shirt we will wear this morning.

Remember, we are all in the slippery milk pail of life, trying to get free from our troubles like the two frogs. Most people give up trying and fail like the big frog. But we must learn to persevere in our effort toward one goal, as the little frog did.

I once had an interesting talk with my Guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, on the subject of Judas. He told me, “Of course, Judas was a prophet.” When I expressed surprise at this astonishing description of the greatness of Judas, Yogananda replied, “Oh yes! He would have had to be, to be one of the twelve disciples. But he had to go through two thousand years of suffering for his treachery.

Remember: the conscious evil force of Satan could not influence human minds if they did not allow it. It is therefore better to know all the lures of evil and the ways to combat them than to blindly deny their existence.

When we share, we are affirming our faith in God, and that we are a part of everyone. This is how we all need to live. Everything we do, we should do for Him. When we live that way, we find that whatever we give comes back to us a thousand-fold.

There was a man who loved God and had achieved a little spiritual advancement, but who also had a few worldly desires left to fulfill. At the end of his life an angel appeared to him and asked, “Is there anything you still want?”

Swami Kriyananda’s comments take the inspiration and spiritual power of Yogananda’s interpretation, reach out to the unspoken questions of people everywhere, and provide not only answers but specific techniques to enable us as readers to experience for ourselves the truth behind these teachings.

Clearly, then, those eighteen years of Jesus’ life must have been deliberately omitted from the official account of Christ’s life. Two vital questions forcibly intrude themselves on this picture: What was omitted? And: What was the reason for that omission?

You must exercise your will in every undertaking, until it drops its mortal delusion of being human will and becomes one with all-powerful Divine Will.

As devotees, we always need to keep in mind that God-realization is our highest priority. And God may want us to work with our health in a way that differs from our personal inclinations.

Victim consciousness puts the blame on other people. It’s the kind of thinking that says: “I have these difficulties and problems because of what people did to me.” But this perspective is wrong.

Through their misuse of feeling and reason, Adam and Eve came under the sway of duality or “maya” (“the knowledge of good and evil”) and lost their attunement with the Divine. Their “sin” was in choosing the outward sexual energy over the inner bliss to which God had invited them.

Suddenly, from somewhere behind him, a dagger was thrown that pierced the heart of the Buddha. David responded with shock, anguish, and a sense of betrayal.

The spiritual path requires courage, dedication, and the absolute conviction that only God can ever satisfy the soul’s yearning for true happiness. “So long as you continue to make the effort,” Paramhansa Yogananda said, “God will never let you down.”

A sudden idea flashed across the hunter’s mind: “If I put on an orange robe every day and pose as a harmless saint, then I can create enough trust in the birds that they will perch on me, and swarm all around me.”

What is “Transformation?”

To express love toward the lower astral “deities” is, in the great scheme of things, one way of sharing God’s love, particularly if, by expressing that love, we are offering appreciation to Him, above all, for His inexhaustible bounty.

The ultimate purpose of visualization and of devotional images is to lift the mind into communion with the Absolute. Always, the quest must be for transcendence.